Various - Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 60, No. 374, December, 1846

The process of gradually reclaiming new land from the waves is somewhat curious. As soon as a sufficient amount of deposit has been thrown up from the sea, outguards, or breakwaters, called höfter are immediately erected. Within the breakwater there remains a pool of still water, which by degrees fills up with a rich slime or mud called slick . As soon as the slick has attained an elevation sufficient to be above the regular level of the high waves, plants styled " Queller " appear, and are soon succeeded by others termed Drücknieder , from the tendency of their interlaced roots and tendrils to keep down the soft mud. In the course of years, the soil rises, and a meadow takes the place of the former stagnant pool. As these new lands are extremely productive, often yielding three hundred-fold on the first crop of rape-seed, sixty to eighty fold on barley, and from thirty to forty on wheat, their possession is ever a subject of great dispute. Formerly the diking and embankments were undertaken by companies; but at present they are in the hands of the Danish government, which makes all necessary outlay in the beginning, and appropriates whatever surplus may remain upon the original cost to future repairs and to the aid of the general poor fund. Some slight idea may be formed of the enormous expense incurred in the construction and maintenance of these dikes, when we state that the Dagebieller dike alone cost ten thousand dollars for one recent repair. Ninety thousand dollars were one summer spent in building embankments around reclaimed land, now valued at one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, thus showing a clear gain of sixty thousand dollars by the undertaking. The embankments are generally from fifteen to twenty feet high. When the nature of the soil upon which they are raised is considered, together with the scarcity of wood on these low lands, it will not be difficult to understand that constant labour is needed to prevent the land from being undermined by the sea, and that it is only by unremitting industry, and constant attention to the condition of the breakwaters and dikes, that the enemy can at all be kept at bay.

The dangers that are to be encountered, and the laborious efforts that must be made for subsistence at home, train the Frieslander of the marshes and islands for the perils of the deep, which we find him encountering with a brave and dogged resolution. The islanders, especially, are constantly engaged in the whale and other fisheries. In the islands visited by Mr Kohl, the greater number of the men were far away on the seas, and their wives and daughters conducting the business of their several callings; some tending cattle, some spinning, others manufacturing gloves. Seals abound upon the coast, and are caught by sundry ingenious devices. A fisher disguises himself in a seal-skin, and travels up to a troop of these sea monsters, imitating, as far as he is able, their singular movements and contortions. When, fairly amongst them, he lifts the gun which has been concealed beneath his body, and shoots amongst the herd. If discovered asleep a seal is sure to be caught, for his slumbers are sound. Conscious of his weakness, Phoca stations a patrol at some little distance from his couch, and an alarm is given as soon as any man appears. At certain seasons of the year vast flocks of ducks light upon the islands, and are caught chiefly by the aid of tame decoy-birds, who mislead the others into extensive nets spread for the visitors. One duck-decoyer will catch twenty thousand birds in the course of a summer; the soft down obtained from the breast of one species is the eider down . The season begins in September and lasts till Christmas. Hamburg beef is due to the localities we speak of. One of the large meadow districts already mentioned, is said to fatten eight thousand head of oxen yearly, who, at their death, bequeath to the world the far-famed dainty.

The islands visited by our author are those lying in that part of the North Sea which the Danes call Vesterhafet , or the western harbour, and which extends close to the shores from the mouth of the Elbe to Jutland. Of these the most noted are Syltoe, Fœhr, Amrum, Romœ, and Pelvorn. Around them lie many excellent oyster-beds – royal property, and yielding an annual income of twenty thousand dollars. The people inhabiting these islands are said to be of Friesic origin: they certainly were colonists from Holland, and they still exhibit many peculiarities of the ancient Friesic stock. They are clean, neat, simple, honest, and moral. Few establishments for the punishment of culprits are to be found either in the islands or on the marshes. As late as the fifteenth and sixteenth century, in cases of homicide the accused was doomed to walk over twelve burning ploughshares. Great crimes seem unknown to-day; and the practice of leaving house-doors unbarred and unlocked upon the wide and desolate marshes, testifies not a little to the general honesty of the people.

Mr Kohl talks a whole boxfull of balaam about the identity of the islanders and the English. In the first place, he insists that Hengist and Horsa were gentlemen of Friesic extraction; and secondly, he compares them to a spirituous liquor: thirdly, he argues on the topic like a musty German bookworm, who has travelled no further than round his own room, and seen no more humanity than the grubby specimen his looking-glass once a-week, at shaving time, presents to him. What authority has Mr Kohl for this Friesic origin of Hengist and Horsa? Is there a port along the Elbe and the Weser, or on the coasts of Jutland and Holstein, which does not claim the honour of having sent the brothers out? Is not the question as difficult to decide, the fact as impossible to arrive at, as Homer's birthplace? But supposing the hypothesis of Mr Kohl to be true, he surely cannot be serious when he asserts, that the handful of men who landed with the brothers in Britain, have transmitted their Friesic characteristics through every succeeding age, and that these are discernible now in all their pristine vigour and integrity. Can he mean what he says? Is he not joking when he puts forward the "rum" argument? A little of that liquor, he says, flavours a bowl of punch. Why shouldn't a little Friesic season the entire English nation with the masculine force of the old Teutonic Frieslanders? Why should it? If Hengist and Horsa supplied the rum, who, we are justified in asking, came down with the sugar and lemon? If the beverage be milk-punch, who was the dairyman? These are questions quite as apt as Mr Kohl's, not a whit more curious than his illustrations. The points of identity between the Frieslander and the Englishman are marvellous, if you can but see them. The inhabitants of the marshes and islands are grave, reserved, and thoughtful; so are the English; so, for that matter, are the Upper Lusatians, if we are to believe Ernst Willkomm; so are a good many other people. The marshers have an eye to their own interests; so have the English. This is a feature quite peculiar to the marshers and the English. It may be called the right eye, every other nation possessing only the left. Of course, Mr Kohl is perfectly blind to his interests, in publishing the present work: yet he is Friesic too! From the Frieslanders we have inherited our "English spleen." How many years have we been attributing it to the much maligned climate? We are starched and stiff; so are the islanders. The marshers dress a May king and queen at a spring festival. We know something about a May queen at the same blessed season. If these were the only instances of kindred resemblance, our readers might fail to be convinced, after all, of the truth of the Friesic theory. These doubts, if any linger, shall be removed at once. One morning a Frieslander carefully opened Mr Kohl's door, and said, " I am afraid there is a house on fire." Kohl rushed forth and found the building in flames; which incident immediately reminded him – he being a German and a philosopher – of the excessive caution of the Englishman, which, under the most alarming circumstances, forbids his saying any thing stronger than "I believe," "I am afraid," "I dare say." Verily we "believe," we are "afraid," we "dare say," that Mr. Kohl is a most incorrigible twaddler. One more peculiarity remains to be told. They keep gigs in the marshes. There are "gentlemen" there as well as in England. Are there none elsewhere?